Coronavirus and shippings

Been thinking about this recently. I’ve no idea how to volunteer to help in my community, but that might be needed. I guess historically churches were a good focus point for local community action, but not sure what one does now.

Man, all of this over a new form of sniffles, its madness. Bloody media sending people into a panic so the government can quietly pass another porn ban or something?

Do you think Italy is a fictional country? We have to learn from their mistakes.

I think we’ve done pretty well, for example, we use the roads as roads, Italy are famous for using anything they want as roads :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m kind of torn on this. I asked my mum today about her experiences of the Hong Kong flu ('68–69). Killed a million people, over 30,000 in Britain, case fatality rate about 0.5% (cf. 0.6–0.7% for COVID-19 in South Korea).

She didn’t even know it happened. Does sound like she had a bad flu around then though.

I do think it’s quite likely we’re in a disproportionate frenzy over this, and it’s creating many good days to bury a lot of bad news.

At the same time, I don’t like that it’s starting to feel like our country is lagging behind many others in protective measures.

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But realistically what can be done? I’m already bound to strictly working from home, as are most people in my industry that I know of.

Are we saying we should totally shut down infrastructure for a virus which in 99% of cases is nothing more than a bad case of flu for a few days?

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Some people will have to go to hospital in order to survive. There is no vaccine so there’s no way to protect those people, except by not infecting them in the first place.

If too many people need hospital treatment simultaneously, this becomes a catastrophe.

Realistically, if we can slow the spread even by a small amount, we save a lot of lives.

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Absolutely, but again, what can realistically be done?

Are you being serious? Just not going to the pub is a realistic change anyone can make that will help enormously. The virus can’t be stopped in its tracks but that doesn’t mean it can’t be slowed down.

In a few weeks we won’t be allowed to go to the pub anyway. Makes sense to take that step now, because it helps.

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Make masks from Huel bags.

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Exactly. Stay at home more. Something we can all do.

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Vaccines are just giving people some virus so their body can build up an immunity, so y’know, we should all just go catch the virus, speed up the process.

Lives aside, reducing peak ‘off sick’ rates is important to the economy. So even if we focus on the minor illness for the healthy side, the ‘delay phase’ matters.

As to what we could be doing to delay the spread, I’m not an expert, or even a knowledgeable amateur, but:

  1. Calling for those who can work from home to do so. (My place of work could, but hasn’t been asked to yet.)
  2. Asking universities to deliver as much course material as possible remotely.
  3. Advising the cancellation of large public events.
  4. Putting density restrictions on certain places – possibly supermarkets and public transport.

Not sure about closing schools. Do we know yet why children have much lower incidence rates? Last I checked we didn’t know if they caught it less (ideal – keep schools open, grandma’s safe) or just didn’t get symptoms and so weren’t tested (bad – close schools or grandma’s in trouble).

Again: some people will need to go to the hospital. We do not have infinite hospitals.

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Kids can carry it without showing symptoms and pass on to others more susceptible.

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Its the same for the flu, every year. The people at risk from this strain of flu are the same ones at risk from every other strain of flu, the only difference is, like you say, we currently dont have a vaccine, but we will soon, this is how literally every single strain of flu goes, every single virus, etc. It is overblown hysteria because the media doesn’t have Brexit to talk about anymore. Just wash your hands, its simple

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Yeah, I know. Closing schools is also much more drastic than the other measures I mentioned. If kids are catching it much less (as suggested initially), it might be a reasonable compromise not to close them. But I don’t know if we have an answer to that yet. I’ll do some digging.

We’ll have a vaccine next year, yes. But for now we can’t even vaccinate the people treating the sick.

Again: look at Italy. That’s a real place that exists, that got the virus a few weeks earlier than the UK. They have had to take severe emergency measures, and should have done so earlier.

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You’re looking at Italy as though it is the UK though, it isnt. Italy has the second highest elderly population in the world. Guess who are most susceptible to coronaviruses? Lets also consider that the UK is more adept at dealing with coronaviruses due to our environment, we’re not as warm as Italy.

We have no reason to rush into a mass panic. People bulk buying things in a panic isn’t helping, closing down everyhing isnt helping. People seem to forget how our immune systems work. Its not like you die every single time you have the flu, and thats what this is, a flu.

Can’t wait to see how they try and organize that! All the people with kids off school take turns to look after each others’ kids while parents take turns working? All mandated and organized by the government?

Mortgage and rent payment breaks for people who can’t work or now have no customers?

I mean, yes, they are all sensible ideas, but how can they be implemented?

Are you going to take in the ferral neighbourhood kids for the day so that their parents can continue to work as delivery staff, nurses, andor carers? Or are you going to leave your kids with a random neighbour so you can go to work?

I think that is all that can be done.

The contain approach failed as it has spread.

Now it’s about delay.

All the people who are going to get it will get it, either now or later.

But if they get it over many months, rather than in a single month, there will be less pressure on the health service etc.

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